


How to have mildly uncomfortable conversations before dinner

by gwendee



Series: The Whole Alternate Timelines Mess [3]
Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysfunctional Family, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Humor, Light Angst, The Author Regrets Nothing, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 15:21:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20027995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendee/pseuds/gwendee
Summary: A short coda to my Alternate Universe series set after "How to get mixed up in an alternate timeline".The obligatory Gakushuu - Gakuhou "bonding" fic (as you do know, I love writing those).





	How to have mildly uncomfortable conversations before dinner

**Author's Note:**

> I'm unhealthily obsessed with the stupid AU I've created. 
> 
> A short coda to my Alternate Universe series set after "How to get mixed up in an alternate timeline". Requires reading of the previous works to understand (or idk you can just wing it if you don't mind being confused". Part 2.5, if you will. 
> 
> The first line of the next installment I'm already writing (see again: unhealthy obsession):
>
>> Irina fucking hated cardio with a passion 

**How to have mildly uncomfortable conversations before dinner**

“We need to talk.”

Gakushuu narrows his eyes at Gakuhou over the coffee cup, then something glints in his eye that fills Gakuhou’s abdomen with dread, and then it comes, the killing blow. “Are you breaking up with me?”

The newspaper crumples in Gakuhou’s hands, and after minutes of uncomfortable choking he splutters out a “what?!” and Gakushuu shrugs unrepentantly. 

“Nobody says ‘we need to talk’ for anything else,” Gakushuu says, with a shit-eating grin too reminiscent of Irina and Gakuhou wants to bar them from contacting each other ever again. “I thought you were about to end our sweet, sexy, forbidden-”

“Stop that,” Gakuhou scolds. 

Gakushuu snickers to himself. “Lost my lover in a time-travelling mishap,” he sings obnoxiously, “daddy saw his ex and how he’s-”

Gakuhou leans over the table to smack him. “You’re such a crass child,” he mutters, hiding his red face behind the newspaper. They eat the rest of their breakfast in silence, and the quiet companionship halts as Gakushuu’s chair screeches against the tiled floor. Gakuhou peers up from his paper to watch him rinse out his cutlery and place them in the dishwasher.

“We still do need to have that talk,” Gakuhou reminds him.

“Was kind of hoping you forgot about it in the past five minutes,” Gakushuu snarks back at him. Insufferable brat. He empties out his bowl in the sink, his alternate counterpart had sent the servants off for a week to avoid unwanted confrontations but the… situation, had been resolved in not four days, and the house was far too large and quiet for two. Although, Gakuhou would had to admit, it did provide him and Gakushuu uninterrupted opportunities to have the long-needed conversation.

That is, if his son would stop dancing around the topic; family matters weren’t Gakuhou’s forte as they weren’t Gakushuu’s but he refused to kick the dust under the carpet this time, or so to speak, and he was going to speak to his son no matter how uncomfortable it would be.

“Gakushuu,” Gakuhou calls after the figure retreating up the stairs. He folds the newspaper and places it on the coffee table, then trudges up the stairs in dread of the guessing game he would have to play: which room was Gakushuu hiding in? 

Except, in a miraculous turn of events, Gakushuu was waiting for him at the other end of the hallway, bouncing on his toes like a child. He’s glancing around and examining their wallpaper with too much disinterest, but his head snaps up at the sound of Gakuhou’s footsteps coming up the stairs. Gakushuu makes deliberate eye contact with him.

“Don’t you dare,” says Gakuhou.

Gakushuu bolts. He runs into a room, one of the storage rooms with nothing more than dusty old armchairs and tables waiting around for when Gakuhou had more than the usual guests to attend to, and Gakuhou reaches the doorway in time to see Gakushuu swing out the open second storey window.

Gakuhou’s heart jumps traitorously in his chest; he knows his son won’t suffer any lasting damage from a fall of just two floors, heck, he knows Gakushuu can break his fall safely from at least a height of three, but it’s just instinct, he’s a  _ parent _ . Very evidently not a good one but he doesn’t quite feel like watching Gakushuu attempt anything mildly dangerous anytime soon.

He should really wrap the kid in bubble wrap. “What the hell are you doing?” Gakuhou demands. Dangling from the third storey window sill, Gakushuu glares at him, and then slides through the open crack in the window.

Gakuhou takes the stairs like a  _ normal _ person, thank you very much. He’d never said truer words than this house being too big for just two people, especially for a man and his eighteen year old son when said son is insistent on the world’s angriest game of tag. Gakuhou’s not  _ that _ old and sure, he’s still physically fit, but he has no desire to start parkouring over his furniture just because his son is silently demanding he does.

It’s only when Gakushuu makes his way to the roof,  _ the goddamn roof _ , does Gakuhou do something vaguely acrobatic and squeezes his way out the window and up onto the top of the manor. Perhaps he was getting a little on with age, he thinks bitterly, pulling himself onto the tiled roof with more difficulty than it would have taken him perhaps three years ago. 

Gakushuu glares, and then jumps off the roof.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Gakuhou mutters. He scales down the side of his house to his son tapping his foot in their backyard, and the moment his feet hit the grass, Gakushuu is off again.

Gakuhou doesn’t think he’d going to have his conversation, if Gakushuu gets his way, and this was a  _ poor  _ attempt at stalling. But he tears off after the brat again, chasing him three laps around his house and then back up to the second floor, and Gakuhou finally gets a hold of him when he’s halfway out yet another window. Gakushuu comes crashing unceremoniously to the floor with a vicious tug of his ankle but Gakuhou can’t bring himself to feel too bad about it, not when he’d just done more cardio in the past twenty minutes than he had in this entire fucking week, and that’s counting his morning jogs.

“Stop struggling, brat,” Gakuhou snaps, and Gakushuu stills under him, looking incredibly defiant. 

“Fine,” Gakushuu says, “ _ talk _ .”

Gakuhou frowns.”Are you going to be like this?”

“I don’t see any reason for us to need to communicate,” Gakushuu says, meeting his stare head-on.

“You sure seemed to have a lot to say to me back in the alternate timeline,” Gakuhou says, and Gakushuu flushes and looks away. Gakuhou wrestles him into a sitting position until Gakushuu is cross-legged across him, arms crossed and curled up. 

“Lost some of that bravado when you’re not showing off,” Gakuhou notes, and Gakushuu bares his teeth, curling in tighter. He acts like… he acts like a caged animal, on the defensive, and Gakuhou is, hurt, he realizes. He doesn’t want his child to shy away from him, to feel assured only when he’s putting on a show, (only for pretenses, Gakuhou thinks, how much of that confidence is a farce?) 

“You don’t have to be scared of me,” Gakuhou says softly.

“I’m not  _ scared _ ,” Gakushuu spits. He drops his arms and folds his hands in his lap. 

Gakuhou sighs. He looks at the ceiling, just a pale cream devoid of pattern or texture, then down at his son’s hair, a smooth strawberry blonde like his mother’s. When Gakuhou reaches a hand out Gakushuu actually  _ flinches _ ; Gakuhou’s only hit him once but one time too many and for all the big talk Gakushuu spouted, he had a reflex now and it broke Gakuhou’s heart a little bit more every time he triggered it. Gakushuu was  _ scared _ of him, scared of what he might do that he had done before.

But whose fault was this but his, anyways?

Gakuhou drops his hand. This was a little like dealing with a stray animal, Gakuhou makes that comparison the first time three years ago in his head at his initial attempts on reconciling with his son and then tossed it out in shame for even the mere  _ thought  _ of it, but refers to the analogy every so often now. Who knows how long it’d been, a few seconds or minutes or even an hour until Gakushuu slowly crawls onto his father’s lap.

Gakuhou lets Gakushuu grip onto his shirt, and buries his face in his shoulder. The sobs come later, barely audible but in time with the slight trembling of Gakushuu’s body, then the free-flow of tears and Gakuhou tries not to think too much on how his son had grown to become such an unnaturally quiet crier. Gakushuu tenses when Gakuhou’s arms wrap around his back, but he relaxes into the hold, and says nothing. 

Gakuhou sits there, slowly stroking his child's hair, when his phone rings from two rooms over where he left it. Gakuhou scowls, and makes no move to displace the position they're in.

"You should get that," Gakushuu says. "Might be important." He crawls off Gakuhou’s lap and walks out the door, and Gakuhou rushes to get his phone. It’s a business call that he rushes through as politely as he can and much later, he finds Gakushuu curled up on their living room couch, quietly engrossed in his phone. 

“I don’t think there’s anything to talk about,” Gakushuu starts, before Gakuhou can say anything. “No, don’t interrupt me. Your idea of a conversation is a long, honest explanation about your ideologies and principles, and then we wonder about the what-ifs that the alternate reality highlighted as the deep feelings of regret and guilt resurface from within you. We go through my repressed childhood and your questionable life decisions, and we mourn for another version of ourselves that we’ve left too far in the past to reach for again.”

Gakuhou stays silent. Gakushuu could be very perceptive when he wanted to be and he thanks his gods everyday that the brat seemed content with trading idle jabs and insulting superficial qualities; if he really tried, Gakushuu could dig deep. 

“Or,” his son continues, “we could not do that. I know who Ikeda is and what he represents in our lives, I’ve long come to terms with it and I think we should let it lie. We’re both messed up people and very acutely self aware, and I don’t think there’s a need to spend a couple more hours reaffirming that.”

Gakuhou must be doing something with his face because Gakushuu gives him a baleful look. “I will accept one apology,” he says, holding up a finger. “Just one, say  _ I’m sorry _ , and that’s it. We bury this conversation, we move on with our lives.”

Gakuhou furrows his brow. “Gakushuu-”

“Don’t say anything else,” Gakushuu says, an edge of desperation creeping into his voice, “I told you in the alternate reality and I’ll say it again. If we start, we aren’t going to resolve this. And honestly? I don’t think it’s something we need to try and fix. It’s gone, broken, and we’ll just cut ourselves on the pieces if we try. Just sweep the glass away and start over.”

Gakuhou’s quiet. He doesn’t know what to say, how to start, there are so many things he wants to tell his son and so many emotions he hasn’t fully organized by himself, and yet-

“Trust me,” Gakushuu tells him, “everything you want to say; I know.  _ I know _ .”

Something crumbles away in Gakuhou then, it might be his resolve. “ _ I’m sorry, _ ” he says, and it comes out more emotional than he thought it would, crashing over rocks like waves and washing over them,  _ washing over them _ . 

Sweeping the glass, he thinks, washing the blood away.

“Thank you,” Gakushuu says. He deflates with relief, and Gakuhou finds himself next to him, hand in Gakushuu’s hair and lips on his forehead, and his son sags against him. They don’t speak for a long while, just sitting in silence, then, “that was  _ exhausting _ .”

Gakuhou’s stunned, for a brief moment. “You made me climb through a window,” he says, “onto the roof.”

“Nope, we started over," Gakushuu says. "No hard feelings."

"That's not how that works," Gakuhou scowls. "You made me climb through  _ a window. _ You jumped down from the roof!" 

"I can't read suddenly, I don't know," Gakushuu says. He stretches and claws at the side of Gakuhou's face, knees him in the gut, and then bites down on his shoulder.

"Fucking limpet," Gakuhou grumbles.

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY SO  
as it should be fairly obvious by this point the tone of this addition is drastically different from the first two. And you're right.
> 
> Have another excerpt from part 3:
>
>> “Don’t think about it, okay?”  
“About what?”  
“The what-ifs,” Gakushuu says “It’s not worth it. It’s,” he looks away, “I know Itona and I got our, well, we got the best possibilities of our time, the good choice that we didn’t have to make. Well, comparatively. And you… it barely changed anything for you, and I’m sorry it didn’t, but,” he smiles, “I love you, okay? We all love you. You lost something you thought you couldn’t ever get back and suddenly it seems like it’s in reach but, it’s not, you don’t have to think about a better version of a life you didn’t have because you’re the best version of Irina that I’ll ever want.” 
>
>> "How exactly do you work?" Irina says to the thingdongle. It doesn't reply her. She doesn't quite know what she expected. 
>
>> Irina knows very well what she’s holding, pulling it out of his knapsack; a palm sized lump of exposed wire and circuit boards, shoddily held together like a third grade science project, light in her hands and impossibly heavy on her shoulders.  
Shit. Shit.  
“That,” the man says, “how much do you know about the universe?” 


End file.
